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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952649">intangibility</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin'>thedarknesswithin (babylxxrry)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Inception (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, a/e is pretty background it's mostly a&amp;m exploration</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:27:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,582</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952649</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>arthur grieves mal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthur &amp; Mal Cobb, Arthur/Eames (Inception)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>intangibility</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>uhhhh hello<br/>i wasn't expecting to actually write something for inception but i watched it like two days ago for the first time, got clowned by all of my older fandom friends for it, and ended up in the a/e tag. fucking love them . also discovered a fuckton of emotions about arthur and mal and a whole platonic relationships thing. here's an exploration of some of those feelings.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first few days after Cobb calls to tell Arthur of Mal’s death pass in a blur. Arthur waits for the grief to set in—the anger, the denial, the bargaining, the depression, any of it. </p><p>And it doesn’t. </p><p>He feels nothing at all, which feels simultaneously apt and disingenuous. </p><p>On one hand, it’s not like he was especially <em>close </em>to Mal as a lover or as family. They had met years ago on a job and kind of just kept working together multiple times a year, which brought with it all of the familiarity one might expect from close colleagues or allied partners. He wasn’t entitled to grief here, necessarily. </p><p>On the other hand, Mal was one of the very, very few people Arthur had ever considered a friend outside of work. He had known her years before either of them really knew Dom, and they had continued to be… close friends even once Dom and Mal started dating. </p><p>Arthur had never considered Mal as someone he might pursue romantically. They were too similar for that—they would have imploded within a few weeks, if that. But they had been <em>something</em>, Arthur thinks, because there were others (Eames, namely) that he considered closer than an average colleague, but no one he trusted as completely as he had Mal. </p><p>And so Arthur sits on a hotel bed in a nameless city (it’s Boston, he knows, because he can see the Citgo sign from the window, but it’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t know) and waits for something to hit home. </p><p>It’s been four nights since Cobb’s call, and Arthur still feels nothing. </p><p>This isn’t abnormal for him. He has had more than one complaint from friends and exes that he never emoted as much as they wanted him to, that he never <em>felt </em>as much as “normal people”. He begs to differ there, but maybe he shouldn’t. His closest friend just died, and he feels nothing. </p><p>He wonders if it’s shock. He doesn’t think so. It’s not like Mal’s death came as a complete surprise, though he doesn’t think any of them were expecting it to be so soon.</p><p>He wonders if he’s broken. </p><p>He doesn’t like that train of thought, so he leaves it to explore later.</p><p>He doesn’t sleep two, three nights, and suddenly it’s been a month and a half since Mal passed, and he has still not grieved her. He has missed her, of course, in the quieter moments when he picks up the phone to call her in the middle of the night because he was thinking about an old case or a new trap to work into their constructions or just to talk because she used to keep hours as odd as his, but he has not <em>grieved, </em>really. </p><p>He takes new cases. He works with Eames and others and hears from Cobb sometimes. He forges a strange, semi-codependent relationship with Eames after three separate extractors ask them to take on cases together back to back. He even visits Phillipa and James a few times. But still, he doesn’t grieve Mal. </p><p>It troubles him as time goes on. Perhaps he was never as close to her as he had thought. Perhaps he simply cannot process grief. </p><p>He misses her intensely some nights. He begins writing long letters to her that he brings with him into dreams and destroys. She will see them, somehow. He is not the one she wants to hear from, but she will see them nonetheless, and he feels better for it. </p><p>And then Cobb calls him up, asking if he would attempt the impossible. </p><p>The Fischer case goes wrong in every way imaginable even if it results in the correct results, and part of Arthur wonders if it’s even worth continuing to dreamshare. He has done this for so many years, and he has a fairly considerable nest egg saved up. If (and it’s a big <em>if</em>) he and Eames were to, maybe, combine savings and move to the outskirts of London like they talked about one late night planning the Fischer case, they would be more than settled.</p><p>And then Arthur starts to dream—real, organic dreams. He hasn’t dreamed without a PASIV in over a decade. It’s terrifying. He cannot control anything here. He cannot warp the world or himself or the projections at will. He is never carrying his totem with him. He is simply at the mercy of his exhausted mind and all of its constructions.</p><p>He dreams of old cases and other ways they could have gone, be they good or bad. He dreams of Cobb and the kids. He dreams of Eames. He dreams of Eames dying. He dreams of Eames living. He dreams of himself and Eames living together and dying together. They have done both more than enough times for Arthur’s mind to gorge itself on possibilities.</p><p>He dreams of Mal, once.</p><p><em>Arthur, </em>she says to him, her voice soothing and gentle in ways it almost never took on when she was alive but for one or two instances. <em>Arthur. It’s okay.</em></p><p><em>What’s okay? </em>he wants to ask. <em>What’s okay? </em>He does not know if he says it out loud, but she seems to hear regardless.</p><p><em>You have grieved me, love, </em>she replies. <em>And I have seen your letters. You have grieved me, I promise. You are not broken. </em></p><p>“Mal…” Arthur makes a conscious effort to speak, even as he feels himself beginning to slip out of dreamspace. “Mal, I’m sorry.”</p><p><em>No, Arthur, you have nothing to apologize for. </em>She begins to fade and Arthur starts to become aware of his body in the waking world, nestled deep in clean hotel sheets. He scrabbles desperately at dreamspace. There’s a finality to Mal’s words that he hates. Words keep coming up his throat and getting stuck on the roof of his mouth and she looks at him expectantly, her form wavering.</p><p>“I’ve missed you so much.” Arthur settles on choking out the simplest truth he can manage. “Mal, I’ve missed you so <em>fucking </em>much.”</p><p>Mal drifts closer to him. Arthur feels his body shifting on the sheets and he screws his eyes closed tighter as if he could will himself to stay here for just another few moments. </p><p><em>I missed you too, my Arthur, </em>Mal whispers inside his head. <em>Listen. I have to go now, but we will meet again and we will have all the time in the world. Be kind to yourself, and let Eames be kind to you, okay?</em></p><p>Arthur can only nod as she cups his face in her hands, just a feather-light brush of coolness against his cheeks. </p><p><em>I love you very much, Arthur. </em>Mal presses a kiss to his forehead like she used to do, before inception, before she and Cobb got together, before they met Cobb at all. <em>Au revoir, mon chéri. </em></p><p>“Mal-” Arthur starts, and she fades away with a little smile. </p><p>Arthur wakes with a start.</p><p>Next to him, Eames stirs.</p><p>“Darling?” His voice is thick with sleep. “‘s everything alright?”</p><p>Arthur lets out his breath in a whoosh. “Yeah. Sleep, Eames.” </p><p>Eames curls closer to Arthur, snuffling a little as he shifts back into sleep. </p><p>Arthur allows himself a moment to card his fingers through Eames’ hair before he sits up and moves quietly off the bed. The balcony door is a struggle to open without squeaking, but Arthur is nothing if not practiced.</p><p>The city is quiet at this hour, and the weather is pleasant enough with a t-shirt and lounge pants on. The chair on the balcony is cold, but Arthur can’t pay it too much mind when he sits, propping his feet up on the low table accompanying it.</p><p>He knows Mal was his own projection. How could she not have been? And yet he finds himself oddly settled for what ought to have been a very unsettling interaction with his own projection. </p><p>In his too-many years of work, he has learned the limits of research and digging and analyzing. He thinks this might be something best left untouched.</p><p>He watches the sun come up over the horizon, tinting the sky orange and yellow and fading into a pale blue. He senses Eames appear at the balcony door, but when he doesn’t turn to acknowledge him, Eames disappears back into the room. Arthur appreciates the consideration. Eames might be a bastard the majority of the time, but he backs off when it matters.</p><p>Arthur goes back inside to get the hotel notepad and pen. Eames has procured coffee and plates of food for them both, but Arthur has something to do before he eats.</p><p><em>Thank you, Mal</em>, he scribbles on the notepad. She always teased him for his handwriting. <em>Au revoir. -- A.</em></p><p>He wraps it around his totem and tucks them back into his bag. He’ll burn it in dreamspace the next time he goes under.</p><p>“Morning, darling,” Eames says when Arthur sits at the table. “Everything okay?”</p><p>Arthur hesitates. “Mal,” he says.</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>“Not bad,” Arthur clarifies. “Just… closure, I think.”</p><p>Eames nods.</p><p>There’s a moment of silence and then Eames starts talking about trying to juggle both plates and mugs from the breakfast buffet downstairs and Arthur teases him for it and they move forward.</p><p>Arthur still misses Mal, still wishes he could talk to her, still aches to just be around her, but it gets easier with time. After all, they will have forever to catch up, someday.</p><p> </p><p>// </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic has been converted for free using <a href="https://aoyeet.space">AOYeet!</a></p><p>_____________________</p><p>comments and kudos keep me going :D</p><p>this is the first thing i've written for this fandom and i've only seen the movie once so far so im still playing around with how i conceptualize their characterizations etc so that may evolve should i do more fic in the future.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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